"Sure I can. You gave me a lipstick."
"Yeah, worth fifteen bucks. This"—her hands hovered over the rich terra cotta, black, and clay colored primitive-style quilt that was her favorite—" this has to be worth hundreds of dollars. Maybe even tens of hundreds."
Jessica grinned. "Boy, you're good for my ego."
"Yeah? Well, as long as I'm doing such a bang-up job, I gotta tell ya, you look really great in that lipstick." Then Lily laughed. "Okay, that's actually a stroke for my ego, since I called it right when I said the color would be perfect for you. But still. You've got pretty lips—you should showcase them all the time."
"Oh, my." Jessica laughed too, and pulled the quilt Lily had admired out of the stack and thrust it at her. "Here, you take this. I think you overestimate its worth, but even if you haven't, just hearing somebody say that something about me is pretty is worth—how did you put it?—tens of hundreds of dollars."
Lily hugged the quilt to her breast. "I passed up your first offer, but I only do my martyr act once. Don't even try to get this back now." She studied Jessica curiously as the other woman closed up the trunk and they let themselves out of the suite. "I imagine your husband must tell you you're pretty."
"Oh, well, sure, but… you know." She shrugged and looked uncomfortable. "Isn't it almost a rule that he has to say so? I think it's in the Official Husband's Handbook, or something."
"I wouldn't know about that; I've never been married. And I obviously don't know your husband well enough to form an ironclad opinion, but just offhand, he doesn't strike me as the type of guy to say stuff he doesn't mean." Lily realized that something about this conversational tack was making Jessica feel awkward, though, so she changed the subject. "Let's go drop this off in my room, and then we can hit the grocers. Are there any clothing stores where we're going? I could sure use something warmer than what I brought with me. If we hadn't left California in such a hurry, I might've taken a minute to realize the weather up here was bound to be colder than I'm used to."
She'd also left home without a lot of cash, so they hit the ATM machine first thing when they got to the small, picturesque town of Eastsound. Then, deciding to save the grocery shopping until last to avoid having to leave unrefrigerated food in the car, they dashed through the drizzle to the nearest clothing boutique.
Jessica watched Lily in baffled wonder as the other woman selected two warm sweaters and a lightweight rain jacket in about seven minutes flat, and some of her enjoyment in this unexpected shopping trip drained away. "Well, that's certainly demoralizing."
Lily paused on her way to the cash register to look back at her. "What is?"
"The way every woman in the world except me seems to be born knowing these things." At Lily's raised eyebrows, Jess waved a hand to indicate the garments the little blonde was about to purchase. "Everything you chose is perfect for you, and you didn't even have to think about it. How did you know exactly what to buy?"
Lily shrugged. "I figured out a long time ago what works best with my coloring and body type, and I just stick within the range I came up with."
"See what I mean? I wouldn't even have a clue what my range is."
Lily simply looked at her for a moment, then asked, "Who decorated your apartment at the house, Jessica?"
It seemed like an abrupt and odd switch in the conversation, but rather than let on Jessica politely admitted, "I did."
"And do you select all the fabrics for your quilts?"
"Yes, of course."
"Then you're certainly capable of learning what your range is. You have exquisite taste."
Jessica stared at her for a moment in arrested amazement; she had never considered that the one had anything to do with the other. Then she blinked, and reality once again reared its ugly head. "But that's entirely different."
"No, it's not. You've created a comfortable environment to live in. This is simply a matter of expanding that comfort and style to include the things you wear, the makeup you choose, and the way you style your hair. You figure out both your good and your not so good points and shoot for ways to accentuate the first and disguise the second."
Jessica's mind went utterly blank, leaving her incapable of coming up with even a hint of what her points were, good or bad.
But Lily didn't get impatient with her the way Cassidy always did when she wasn't quick enough on the fashion uptake. She simply said, "Let me give you an example. I'm busty and way too hippy, but my waist is nice and little, so the dilemma is how to accentuate the waist without bringing attention to the hips. My compromise is no-fuss clothing. I stay away from busy patterns and ruffles and puffs and the like. I tend toward straight, long lines with accessories that hint at my curves. And I love heels, partly because I'm short and they make my legs look longer and give me more height, and partly just because they're so darn pretty." She smiled unrepentantly and shrugged.
Jessica began to get a glimmer of what the other woman was talking about when she truly examined Lily for the first time and realized the petite blonde's figure wasn't perfect. She simply knew how to give the impression that it was.
"Also my complexion is mostly olive," Lily continued. "That gives me the option of wearing a variety of colors. But I've learned to steer clear of the brighter oranges and the yellower greens, because they make my skin look sallow." She fingered her necklace. "I adore jewelry, and you can probably tell I'm not your basic outdoorsy kind of woman. I rarely wear rings, though, because I do have a career that can be very messy, especially on the hands, and I lean toward jeans for both work and everyday use, because I can press them to make them look a little dressier, but they're still a practical garment that can take a lot of abuse." Lily steered Jess over to the three-way mirror in the corner of the shop and gently turned her to see her own reflection. "Now you try it."
Jess studied herself for a minute, men blew out a breath. "I'm an indoor-outdoor woman," she said softly. "I spend most of my time inside, but I also like to tramp the cliffs. I don't have a career, or even a job, but like Cassidy, I volunteer on a number of charitable committees that call for dressier day wear and some evening apparel." Then she faltered. Saying what she did was easier than assessing her pluses and minuses—especially when she felt she had more minuses.
"You have a delicate bone structure," Lily prompted.
Jess met her gaze in the mirror. "That's a very diplomatic way of putting it. I'm skinny :"
"Yeah? I'd love to hear you ask the nine out of ten American women who constantly struggle with their weight how sorry they feel for you because you think you're too slender."
"Easy for you to say," Jess snapped, and it didn't even occur to her to be appalled by her abrupt lack of manners. "You're stacked."
' 'Boobs , you're talking about?" Lily made a rude noise. "Please. You can buy those anywhere. Every lingerie department from Victoria's Secret to Walmart offers some form or another of padded, water-filled, or gel-filled bras. You can always beef up that area, but trust me on this, you cannot subtract excess curves to get the kind of slinky little hips that you've got. Neither can those of us who are more height challenged add inches to get those long legs. So quit your whining."
Jessica laughed in surprised gratification and studied herself more closely. "Okay, I have"—she cleared her throat—"delicate bone structure. And long legs and slender hips."
"And pretty lips."
"Yes, and pretty lips that look good in this shade of lipstick." Beginning to see she did possess pluses, she gained confidence. "I have nice skin, but…" She plucked at her sweater. "This color is all wrong for me, isn't it?"
"Too pastel," Lily agreed. "It washes you out. And a style less bulky would be more flattering. Something like these." She led Jess over to a stack of chenille sweaters that zipped up the front and had a different type of stitching through the midsection that lent a hint of a waistline. "Yep, I bet these would look good on you. What color grabs your fancy?"